ALTERNATIVE FUEL: ETHANOL

By RAHUL.N.RAO th 8 semester, Department of Mechanical Engineering. Department of Mechanical Engineering, DON BOSCO INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, Kumbalgodu, Mysore Road, BANGALORE-560072, Email id: [email protected], Phone: 9449004400

ABSTRACT:
The world of century 2000 present many critical challenges. One of the most important challenges concerns the environment .As population increases and the standard of living improves, there is an increasing concern that there will a shortage of energy to heat our homes and power the vehicles we clean air, clean water and biodegradable, renewable materials. Advances in technology have allowed development of alternative energy sources. Ethanol is a good alternative energy sources. My present paper focuses attention towards not only the Types of energy resources to be used i.e. Nonconventional sources but the Alarming question is How much and way of Producing and Managing Energy? So we are giving more attention towards the better and better exploitation of Energy through Biological Approach i.e. Use of Bioenergy. Increased use of ethanol as fuel has developed since the late 1970s.Ethanol, used as gasoline component, improves combustion and reduces emission of CO which contributes to the formation of smog. Using ethanol can slow global warming. During past two decades enormous efforts were made to harness Bioenergy sources in India to meet up the growing demand of energy for domestic use in particular, as such Department of NonConventional Energy Sources (DNES) under the Ministry of Power and Energy was setup in 1982.So the urgent need of the day is to implement the process and use of Biological energy in our day to day life to make our Environment Pollution free and our country self dependent and reliable in this field.

Keywords: Gasoline, ethanol,environment.

Introduction:
As much as the wheels of energy turns, more and more the country will prosper especially the case of India which is the seventh largest country in the world where the population is increasing drastically and thats why is on the verge of extinction of disappearance of conventional fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas as these resources are very finite and if will be on use in same manner as in current scenario then will be no more available in the near future. So the better, reliable, alternative of this is the more and more use of Non-conventional sources of energy.

Energy Consumption A World Scenario

Oil 33% Coal 22.8% Bio mass 13.8% Hydro 5.9 % Nuclear 5.6 % A world data shows USA which has only 5.5 % of worlds population consumes 35 % of the global energy consumption while Asia and Africa Latin America has 70% of world population, consumes 17.5 % of the global energy consumption. It means energy consumption by 1 American = 40 Indian = 90 Nigerians.

Alternative Fuel Need and Prospects in India

Ethanol is an alcohol made by fermenting corn for other similar products. The liquid ethanol or ethyl alcohol can be used as a fuel when blended with gasoline or when in its original states. Methanol is made by fermenting almost any material that contains starch and other farm plants and wastes are also suitable. Annual ethanol production in IOWA is approximately 440 million gallons. There are three primary ways that ethanol can be used as a transportation fuel: 1. As a blend of 10% ethanol with 90% gasoline. 2. As a component of reformulated gasoline, directly and / or as ethyl tertiary butyl ether. 3. Use directly as a fuel with 15% gasoline known as E85.

Ethanol use production has increased considerably during the 1980s and 1990s. Proponents of ethanol have identified addition reasons for increased production and use. 1. It is in our national interest to reduce dependence on oil imports. 2. The quality of the environment improves.Co emissions is reduced and lead and other carcinogens (cancer causing agents) have been removed from gasoline. 3. Car owners gain from increased octane in gasoline which reduces engine knock. It also absorbs moisture and cleans the fuel system. Presently, Indian is the largest sugarcane producer in the world, followed closely by Brazil. As per indicative estimates, the country has a total installed production capacity of about 2835 million liters of ethanol per years as against the total requirement for potable, industrial and other uses of about 1200 million liters. This is one major reason to focus on the operation of ethanol fuel vehicles. Significantly, emissions from vehicles include about 1/5 th carbon dioxide regarded as major contributor to global warming .Besides, oxides of sulphur and nitrogen. Precipitate acid rains, in addition to suspended particulate matter etc. Posing grave health risks .So all the above mentioned facts provoke a strong need for bringing ethanol outlook.

Objective:
Ethanol is also the only liquid fuel alternative currently available. Other technologies are under consideration, but none with the exception of natural gas is feasible at this time. Fuel cells are still under development and are not economically viable. Electric cars have range drawbacks, and according to leading U.S researcher Lester Lave, If the current U.S. fleet of 200 million vehicles were run on current lead acid, nickel cadmium, or nickel metal hydride batteries, the amount of these metals discharged into the environment would increase by a factor of 20 to 1,000, raising vast public health concerns.

Sources of Ethanol: There are basically two sources of ethanol: starch ethanol
produced from the fruit and the seeds of plants (kernels of corn produces corn ethanol) and cellulosic ethanol produced from whole plants leaves, stems, stalks of switchgrass and sugarcaneharvest etc.

Process Flow for Ethanol Production:

There are several methods available to produce fuel ethanol, but the prominent route to produce this important fuel is through the following steps. Each of these steps is based on one chemical process or the other, without any major complexity involve. Presently, dry milling and the wet milling methods are the most common techniques employed for the purpose, as highlighted with the individual processing steps in below table.

Processing Stage
Milling

Process Features
Hammer Mills grind the passing feedstock into a powdery mall Inter mixing of the mass with water and alpha amylase Passage via the cookers maintained at a high temp.stage (120-150 C) followed by a low temp. holding period(at 95 C) Liquefaction of the heat applied Cooling of the mash available in the cookers followed by the addition by the addition of secondary enzyme i.e. glucoamylase Addition of the yeast the mash so as to ferment the sugars to ethanol and carbon dioxide

Remarks
Grain size should be small Presence of the high temperatures reduces the bacteria levels in the mash

Liquefaction

Saccharification

Fermentation

The addition converts the liquefied starch into the useful fermentable sugars(Dextrose Within a batch fermentation process, the mash is retained one fermenter for nearly 48 hrs.prior to the engine of the distillation process.

Distillation

Dehydration

Denaturing

By products

The fermented mash known as Beer constitutes of about 10% alcohol, along with the nonFermentable solids from the corn and yeast cells Moisture , if any , present in the alcohol obtained above is removed by passing it through a dehydration system Alcohol is made unfit for human consumption by denaturing it with a small (25%) of gasoline CO2 (in large quantity) and Distillers grain are produced during ethanol production

Removal of alcohol takes place from the solids and water

Pure alcohol finally obtained is in an anhydrous from and is about 200 proof Pilferage for human consumption drastically reduced Alcohol free CO2 is utilize by ethanol plants after proper compression for sale as carbonate beverages or for other purpose. In comparison , the distillers grains have a high protein content along with other nutrients for high value use or percentage demonstration

The below figure shows the cycle of ethanol fuel viz., source , manufacturing, application.

Characteristics of Ethanol:
Ethanol vehicles exhibit the same power, acceleration, payload, and cruise speed as conventionally fueled vehicles. In addition, ethanol use has several benefits. It has a higher octane rating than gasoline, which reduces engine knock and can result in higher energy efficiency. Ethanol also absorbs moisture and helps prevent gas-line freeze-up in cold weather, preventing the need to add expensive and possibly harmful fuel additives.

Justification for Ethanol as A Fuel Substitute:

The escalating oil import bills, dwindling fossil fuel reserves, burgeoning pollution levels,deteriorating health standards , and above all, a strong indicators to dictate a change from a purely fossil fuel mode to that based on a blend of both gasoline and ethanol. In India , trial runs of gasohol in the public transport vehicles have, by and large, shown quite encouraging results. The clear advantage of trying this fuel on the large scale is also manifested in abundantly available local reserves of sugarcane production .If viewed realistically, the issue is not so much about the partial utilization of ethanol, but much more importantly the broad policy framework, within which,its large use can become possible .

The above figure shows the gasoline demand which is less compared to that of the production of ethanol.

Energy value and properties of various fuels Parameter Petrol Diesel

Energy content(MJ/Kg) Liquid density (Kg/I) Energy density (MJ/I) Normal b.p.( 0 c) Octane# Cetane# 43.65 0.753 52.1 37-205 91-97 0-5 45.15 0.843-0.848 38.16 140-360 25 45-55

Ethanol
29.73 0.77843 23.32 79 11 5

The above figure shows the CO2 emission of various fuels.

Advantages Of Ethanol:
1. Higher latent heat vaporization 2. Uniform composition. 3. Higher flash point. 4. Very high octane rating. 5. No hazardous component. 6. Higher compression operation of the engine. 7. Reduced particulate emissions. 8. Enhanced engine power output and efficiency. 9. Increased safety during use.

Conclusion :
The renewed faith in ethanol as in effective gasoline blended fuel is certainly a welcome step. With the recent commissioning of the pilot plant facilities at a few locations, more and more such initiatives should be forthcoming .The initial run with gasohol (5% ethanol base) could be extended on a large scale, but only with the requisite infrastructure availability in place.

References:
1) Alternative Fuel for Transportation by Anshu Srivastava , Shakun Srivastava , Nigam.A.C 2)EPA fact sheet 3)Alternative Fuels: Incompletely Addressing the Problems of the Automobile by Benjamin M. Shasby 4)www.nyc.gov 5) www.thomaspetroleum.com/ethanol.html